State v. Sheehan

558 So. 2d 758, 1990 La. App. LEXIS 548, 1990 WL 27738
CourtLouisiana Court of Appeal
DecidedMarch 14, 1990
DocketNo. CR88-1193
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 558 So. 2d 758 (State v. Sheehan) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Louisiana Court of Appeal primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. Sheehan, 558 So. 2d 758, 1990 La. App. LEXIS 548, 1990 WL 27738 (La. Ct. App. 1990).

Opinion

YELVERTON, Judge.

John Anthony Sheehan has been twice convicted by Avoyelles Parish juries of second-degree murder, a violation of La.R.S. 14:30.1, for the April 30, 1986, shooting death of his wife. On appeal from the first conviction this court reversed, 515 So.2d 670, because of a due process violation. In April 1988 Sheehan was again convicted, and it is from the second conviction that the present appeal is taken.

Defendant raises eight assignments of error. Two were expressly abandoned. Of the remaining six, the first involves sufficiency of the evidence to convict under the Jackson v. Virginia standard. The others are the alleged disqualification of a juror emanating from the juror’s responses on voir dire, alleged improper communications to the jurors during deliberations, denial of a motion to change venue, and the refusal of the trial court to permit a certain witness to testify on a remand to hear newly discovered evidence. We find that the evidence was sufficient to convict. We find that none of the remaining assignments of error have merit. We affirm the conviction.

ASSIGNMENT OF ERROR NO. 1:

This assignment relates to the sufficiency of the evidence. At the trial, the only disputed element of the offense of second-degree murder was whether the defendant had the specific intent to kill or inflict great bodily harm.

On April 30, 1986, defendant fatally shot his wife, Monica, with a 12-gauge pump shotgun. He was sitting in a chair holding the shotgun loaded with buckshot. It was pointed at his wife, who was sitting on the floor, when it fired. The victim sustained one shotgun blast in her heart.

Sheehan and his wife, along with their eight month old son, lived in Crestview, Florida. They came home to Louisiana for a visit in order to attend the wedding of one of Monica’s friends. The first night home they stayed with Monica’s mother in Zachary, Louisiana. The next morning they drove to Dupont. It was there, in the home of Sheehan’s grandparents, Robert [760]*760and Lillian Marks, that the shooting occurred.

Sheehan and Monica had been married less than two years. They had marital problems from the start. There was evidence of physical abuse. Monica was bruised several times and went to the hospital once. Sheehan told people that he did not love Monica and that he wished he had not married her. Monica’s stepfather testified that the defendant told him that he did not love the deceased and would do anything that it took to get her out of his life.

Shortly after the marriage, or nearly two years before Monica’s death, a John Hancock agent solicited and sold defendant a $25,000 insurance policy on Monica’s life. On April 17, 1986, thirteen days before his wife’s death, Sheehan solicited and obtained a $50,000 policy on Monica’s life from the same agent. This application stated that no other insurance was pending or contemplated. On the same day the defendant delivered a military allotment to the agent, making the $50,000 coverage effective immediately.

Six days later, on April 23, 1986, which was one week before Monica’s death, Shee-han contacted a State Farm Life Insurance agent about obtaining additional insurance on Monica’s life. An appointment was made for 4:30 p.m. the next day, April 24. At the State Farm office for the appointment, appellant completed an application for a variable life policy providing $75,000 coverage on the life of each spouse and $10,000 coverage on the life of the couple’s infant son. Sheehan took the application home with instructions to get his wife’s signature. Early the next morning, April 25, he brought the application back. It was signed with Monica’s name. He produced $88 in cash for the first two monthly premiums, in order to obtain immediate coverage. In the application, he stated no other applications for life insurance were pending with other companies.

It was stipulated at trial that defendant signed his wife’s name on the State Farm application. The defendant was named primary beneficiary on all policies on the life of his wife.

The defense in the case was that the defendant was cleaning the shotgun and the shooting occurred accidentally. The defendant allegedly began to clean the shotgun by wiping the exterior with an oily rag. The victim was seated, cross legged, on the den floor playing a game. The defendant’s grandmother, Mrs. Marks, was in the kitchen when the shotgun discharged.

There was expert testimony given at trial by a pathologist, based on trajectory calculations and the defendant’s version of the physical position of himself, the gun, and his wife, that the shooting could not have occurred the way the defendant said it did.

Right after the shooting, defendant’s grandmother ran from the kitchen into the den. She saw Monica lying on the floor and telephoned the operator for help. She also sent the defendant out to try to find some help and then she telephoned a nearby nursing home requesting assistance from that source. In response to this call two nurses and an ambulance driver arrived.

The two nurses testified that they found the victim dead on the floor. They saw on the floor two green unspent shotgun shells and a red spent shell near the body. The defendant did not return to the house until after the nurses got there.

Detective Robert Venable of the Avo-yelles Parish Sheriff’s Department arrived at the scene later. He testified that the only shells on the floor when he got there were the two green unspent shells. The weapon was on the sofa. He found and removed one spent red shell from the gun’s chamber and he found one unspent red shell in the magazine. He found no spent shell on the floor, only the two green unspent shells. Detective Venable testified that the weapon was a pump shotgun which required deliberate action to eject a fired shell from the barrel, and that moving the slide forward again takes a shell from the magazine and puts it in the chamber. The defendant was present in the room with the gun after the nurses left and before Detective Venable arrived. Mrs. Marks, defendant’s grandmother, testified [761]*761at trial that when the couple arrived that morning there were four unspent green shotgun shells on the bar (between the kitchen and the den), and that the baby had played with them and dropped two of the shells on the floor. According to the evidence the defendant was the only person who handled the gun.

The defense was that the killing was an accident, and that the evidence was insufficient to exclude every reasonable hypothesis of innocence. The defendant urges that the explanation that he was cleaning the gun and it went off is a reasonable hypothesis. For this hypothesis he argues that there was testimony that the defendant’s grandfather sometimes left the gun loaded. Defendant points to the facts that the insurance purchased did not provide for double indemnity, and that it was for whole life coverage rather than term. He argues the remoteness and insignificance of the marital problems as having a bearing on motive. A forensic scientist testified on defendant’s behalf offering an accident explanation of the shooting.

The disputed element of second-degree murder in this case is whether the defendant had a specific intent to kill or to inflict great bodily harm, as required by the statute defining the crime, La.R.S. 14:30.1, and the definition of specific criminal intent, in La.R.S. 14:10(1).

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
558 So. 2d 758, 1990 La. App. LEXIS 548, 1990 WL 27738, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-sheehan-lactapp-1990.